First I heard of it. Not surprised.

Rich better wise up soon, because the guillotine is getting closer with every year.

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five)
Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC by OccupyWallSt
at OccupyWallStreet.org

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.
On September 21st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent.

Ending capital punishment is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges.
Ending police intimidation is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more than half of the country’s population.

Ending wealth inequality is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters.

Ending corporate censorship is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.

Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing.

Ending political corruption is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work.
Ending joblessness is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty.
Ending poverty is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance.

Ending health-profiteering is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countries.

Ending American imperialism is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, America was at war with the world.

Ending war is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, we stood in solidarity with Madrid, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Portland and Chicago. Soon we will stand with Phoenix, Montreal, Cleveland and Atlanta. We’re still here. We are growing. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world.

You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the bosses. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, the people will speak. Join us.

We speak as one. All of our decisions, from our choice to march on Wall Street to our decision to continue occupying Liberty Square, were decided through a consensus based process by the group, for the group.

Yeah, not sure what the "one demand" thing is all about.

 

A video of some female protesters getting maced by cops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA&feature=youtu.be

Holy crap, there's that much of international support? So it's really a global revolution. I thought they meant it just as a continuation of Arab spring, Iceland revolution and Spanish and London riots. I'm glad to see these cities know about each other. Now let's hope Prague gets on the list!
 
Good point. Most of us were running in a monetary treadmill (I'm beginning to like that expression) for someone else. What about giving a good part of the money and power back to the communities, where we can reach the leaders? 
I think the only way to create a stable society is to make it so good, that people will gladly work for its benefit, kind of like freeware developers work.

And something within me (and it's not the stum) wants to show a big F-inger to all these dystopian writers, filmmakers and pub ranters, by bringing the new golden age of optimal world management.

Yep, and possibly it was one of their street courses of dicussion and rhetorics

On the other hand, I've watched some people's testimonies on how the police was violent and how a shopkeeper let them in his shop to not get arested. He gave them water to rinse their eyes of tear gas, new clothes, even cigarettes. These people really have support from everyone around. Mom says this is just like the Velvet revolution in 1989, when people gave out thermos flasks with hot tea and blankets to the protesters, because it was in November and snow started to fall. 

 

This is what kills me. You'd think that the study of history will always point out this. If you starve people to death they will turn on you.

And the stupid part of all this is that the vast majority of people protesting DONT want to end the free market, they simply want to end the abuse and monopolies.

This is what Beyond doesn't get. It is not that people want to "force" ANYONE. It is that people WILL do just the same as any other species. We are wired to do what we need to do to survive.

AND all this backlash CAN be avoided IF IF IF IF IF IF those at the top change their attitude. They should want to give DIRECTLY more hours, more pay and more benefits. Because if they did, the people they hurt would not be hurting and would not be seeking government help, much less protesting.

IT IS an attitude change I want from them, not an end to the open market.

If the pay gap keeps exploding, while profits keep exploding, while wages fall and hours get cut, they will only have themselves to blame.

An extraction market is what we have, and all it will do is produce MORE poverty and fewer jobs and lower wages.

 

 

 

The problem is, once you do it, the production costs will rise, prices will rise to keep the profit and people will again have less buying power. Even if the businessmen aren't greedy, they must be, to survive in the competition and expensive workforce. Only strong corporations can withstand that, not small businessmen. The word is competition and capability of competition. Why should government sponsor bloodshed of economic gladiators? Who asked these employees, if that is what they want to do, to fight all day long against other corporations? 

This reminds me of one horror story of Clive Barker, In the hills, the cities.

I could bet that not even the master writer of horror never had imagined such an economically-social interpretation of his story

Yes, the people out there don't want an end of the free market. But do we have a free market, if a few individuals dictate the prices of basic commodities? Just remember the guy who bought most of global cacao, if not all of it. The market may seem free to us, but it's not for the countries that produce the food and have to sell it for ransom prices or have nobody to buy it. There is certainly a necessary change of attitude, like use local products and services at all costs. But that won't work without legal changes of attitude, like embargos keeping cheap foreign shit from destroying local quality producers, who feel responsible to their customers.

The problem is greed, caused by people's insecurity and scarcity of basic needs. That's why people try to become more rich, because it feels good to be secure and they will try to overthrow any limits between them and senseless competition for way too more wealth than they need. That's why they produce useless shit in every turn of monetary treadmill. The surest way to become rich is to hire other people to run in the treadmill for you, but that doesn't solve anything.

I'm not against a free market, competition and whatsoever. But I want it strictly divided from living. Just like you want separation of Church and state. Losing a game of basketball won't cost you the house, so why losing a game of 9-5 office paperwork will, when it's not even fun anyway? A game is a game. Non-players shouldn't be punished and in the end, even the winners of the game have to put their chips, jettons and paper money back into the box.
And people shouldn't gamble with things that we need for living or that can't be replaced, like food, water, metals, fossil fuels and other resources. 3 meals a day and a roof overhead (I mean your own, doctor's and school's roofs) should be basic human right, exercised by local authorities, who will receive all locally taken taxes except the indirect like VAT... But that's just a small technical detail, on the way to resource-based economy.

 

Yep, but there is a way to surprise even the history. What about a revolt, but an intelligent and peaceful one? Just people reorganizing themselves, reshaping the society? Of course, with lots of yelling, chanting, clapping, stomping and other enthusiastic noise, but without such bullshit as "we will get you to accept the declaration of civil and human rights for life, even if we should cut your head off with guillotine."

 Just like the people of Iceland did it a couple of years ago. After their bankers and politicians made extreme debts, the citizens got pissed off. They refused to pay the debts, they threw the politicians out of the government and chased the bankers out of the country by Interpol. Then they universally elected a new government out of commoners and created a their own new constitution. (they had a copy of Denmark's before) 
So you see, it's possible. People today can really behave differently. You just won't hear about it on TV.

While it isn't necessarily impossible to achieve, I rather doubt enough people will form a party capable of fixing all the bs, AND gain enough respect and support from the people to actually accomplish the changes necessary to prevent a violent uprising before shit hits the fan. Canada, having four parties (that cross political spectrums) with each having (however remote) a chance of forming government, MIGHT be able to pull it off if a party goes the right way. The US, with only two viable parties (with little variance in political spectrum), is not in a position to do so at this time. It is more likely that the nations would break up than come together.

That was the idea behind the safety net of the welfare state with things like food stamps and public housing. But over time, it has only made the problem of poverty and food security worse because there was no mandatory birth control, work or education required to receive benefits. It just created a permanent underclass of people that exchange free welfare benefits for votes. Food stamps just create more demand, driving the price up.

I agree with some of their points. The system is setup so the rich get richer without any work or hiring workers because we allow the rich to buy up land and commodities produced without any production. They blame the banks for taking advantage of the working poor, but this is really a symptom rather than a direct cause. You can stop banks from loaning to the poor, but they'll still be poor.

The protesters don't seem to be demanding that the unemployed get trained for the jobs that are available. Demanding that the education system get fixed. They seem to be OK with letting people take advantage of the welfare system which is just as much a problem as anything. Why don't they address the greed of people that have children they can't take care of?

Is there ever going to be a political movement to get rid of free welfare for both the rich and the poor? These protesters are still in favor of 'something for nothing', they just want it to go to a different group of people. So how are they any different than corporate lobbyists?

 

 

OF COURSE production costs go up, duh. BUT, what does not have to happen is labor being cut or the price going up. What has NOT happen but could happen, is that you CAN simply being the shareholder or CEO take less of a cut to insure the stability of the labor and the buying power of the labor.

AGAIN what WILL HAPPEN is not what has to happen and it all depends on ATTITUDE CHANGE.

I doubt very seriously if those at the top get less and get taxed more will starve to death. "Cant, and don't want to, are two different things".

 If those at the top truely cared they would invest here and pay well here and take care of the workers HERE. I do not think we should give China one fucking dime considering that they have a police of slave labor and cheating over valuing their money and undercutting our currency. They are nothing but loan sharks.

If you make 30 mill, and put 15 mill back into the workers, don't expect me to cry for you if all you have left over is 15 mill.

SHIT even 1 mill. If you took 500k and put it back into the workers, there STILL is not one place in America that you could not live comfortably off 500k.

I don't care. Prices rise in our current market, not because of the consumer having a say, prices rise because the competition is at the marketing shareholder level. It is whatever the market can get away with. If it were a healthy consumer driven market  what we have now wouldn't have happened and prices would not be so lopsided and would be more manageable as a ratio to the cost of living.

I've seen EVERYTHING go up while the product shrinks. I've seen my bosses profits go up, WHILE my hours get cut DISPITE his increase in profits. It is not a fair market or a competitive market. It is an exploiative market.

What you are telling me IS CORRECT in our current climate of attitude. What I am telling you is that if the people at the top DONT change their attitude, THEY will end up getting what they want in cheap labor and create another India and China here. That may be their idea of competition, but it will never be mine.

The problem is that while short term it will make some richer, the more the climate starves people to death and makes them slaves to work, the more the people will hate the environment they live in.

The rich in this country need to CARE and they've tried the hording tactic and successfully sold fear to maintain their monopoly, but it will not last, not here in this country. People here will not put up with slave wages or starving. If they think the success of this country depends on those in the middle and bottom worker longer hours for less and less and no health care, they are sadly mistaken and long term it WILL come back to bite them in the ass.

My boss falsely thinks that by cutting my hours it will motivate me to work harder. I WAS ALREADY WORKING HARD. All he is doing is making excuses to sit on his money. Starving me doesn't motivate me, IT FUCKING PISSES ME OFF.

He didn't have to cut my hours, he wanted to. If he can afford a second house and an Audi, he can afford to keep the hours he was giving me to keep me stable.

When I had the hours I needed I was much more motivated. He's simply pissed that I am not buying into his bullshit. He wants my loyalty, and the way he shows it to me is to fuck me over?

The American worker WANTS TO WORK HARD, we simply don't want to be slaves or be treated like mere machine parts or numbers on a page.

 

 

It is widely available, it's getting people to use it. The people that claim they can't afford contraception all seem to be able to afford cable TV, cell phones, cigarettes, liquor, etc... So the only question is this: Is society going to force these people to be responsible in order to recieve welfare benefits or is just going to be a free entitlement?

What you don't seem to get is that there needs to be a coorelation between responsible behavior and biological sucess. Is there any Darwinian advantage to getting an education, a good paying job and not having many children? No, not the way the welfare state is set up now. So shouldn't we expect a lot of irresponsible behavior if this is what works?

Reforming the education system, but this means taking on the teachers unions and the administrations. The system is designed to provide job and pension security for teachers, administrators and text book printers. Not solve our unemployment problem.
 

I'd don't know what this means. What do you want to the government to force people to do or not do? To me, Government = use of deadly force, so translate it into what I understand.

 

It's a moral hazard, unconditional welfare is a bailout for people's bad decisions. So the just keep making the same bad decisions generation after generation.

The economy is about producing goods and services as well. The theory of food stamps is that people can't afford food so we pay for it. But the price of food is supply and demand. So it's running on a treadmill that keeps going faster, create more demand without increasing supply. This drives up prices.

What money does is prevent someone that does not contribute to production from taking more than they put into the economy. Now I agree the system is broken, but do you have a better system to keep people from receiving a free lunch every day? Until you do, money is the way to go.

Please translate this in the language of 'Government = deadly force'.

I agree, but the problem is with the state as it is today. The state is selfish and shares only with selfish people, like business mafia or mobs of gypsy lobbyists. A selfish state is not friendly to the real, new solutions, it wants to keep its secretive and bloated bureaucratic apparatus that soaks in money. What we need first is a transparent, responsible, efficiently utilitarian government, dedicated to serve the people, not itself. Then we can invent and apply all kinds of solutions.

For example, if some people can't hold all responsibility, they should not have all rights and freedoms. Such people only get spoilt by freedom. They need rules and regulations to keep them upright, no matter of their age. In case of maladapted and irresponsible groups or ethnicities (like gypsy tribes around here) it is fairly simple. Cut down welfare and instead move them to live in sort of a kibbutz with tough and authoritarian supervisors. There they can work, educate themselves and pursue traditional arts and culture. It would only need a small changes in legislative, like travel restrictions (do you know what happened in Canada?) and mild corporal punishment, if force is what they admire. 
 

We can not follow market forces anymore. The change of system is not profitable, so what? In efficient government the money are spent on good purposes, thoughtfully formulated and transparently voted for by the informed and educated public, not because blind buying power compels us so, or lobbyists stuffed someone's pockets full of banknotes. The government has a plenty of opportunities to create meaningful jobs, except it doesn't want to, just yet. 

No, I mean it as a kind of local activism. People from under the mayor or mayor himself should recruit and organize volunteer activists among locals and assign them to jobs. This is based on understanding your town as an extension of your kitchen or living room, something you should care about. It already works quite well with young people, if some fun program is arranged after the work.

Such a culture of local voluntary work for making the town better may sound utopian or cheesy. But it actually becomes very possible, once the government starts serving the people. People are hard workers, when it's for the common or greater good, it's fun and they don't have to worry about survival and making the financial ends meet. I know what I say, I've done some voluntary work this year myself. Even lazy folks work hard when surrounded by hard-working friends.  All you need is a few group leaders who can inspire people and entertain them. Plus some music on the background and a little refreshment during breaks. 

If welfare is moral hazard, then what are prices? Prices drive up prices. Money make money, that is the treadmill: You want money? Increase your prices. You want to buy something? Make money! Create an artificial demand by advertising, so people will buy more and you make money. 

This is where the price of food comes from. It is NOT supply and demand, it is a bubble of artificial demand. We just can not afford food stamps, when some businessmen gamble with the prices of food. If food is declared a strategic resource (strategic for benefit of the people) and distributed according to people's real needs, then this is the cheapest solution. Just give it to them, as much as they need, excluding absurd demands, of course.

 Yeah, money maybe prevents a local hobo Joe Schmoe from taking an extra bread or wine bottle from the store. But it does not prevent the whole financial industry, which is a huge global parasite and contributes nothing at all. Last time I heard, the financial parasites got a huge bailout from Mr Obama that could have saved everyone's asses. So do money really prevent anything substantial?

 In fact, I do. It's called Resource-based economy. Money are imaginary, resources are real. Therefore, resources are more important than money. Once we have a system of managing the resources better than through money, we can tell money goodbye. We can do it in one or more steps, like debt-free money and so on, but it changes nothing on the fact, that money are anachronism. RBE is diffcult to define, except as the utilitarian and scientific method applied on the problems of our daily living. This FAQ should answer many of your questions and doubts about daily aspects of living in RBE.

But tell me, why the hell people shouldn't receive a free lunch every day? Three normal-sized meals a day should be a basic human right! There is so much criminality, just because people are threatened by hunger. Criminality is not a curse from gods, it is an effect that has a cause. Design society in such a way that doesn't provoke criminality and you redirect almost all the resources from judges, the police and army into 3 meals a day and other modest basics of living that somehow seem so expensive and unreachable to you.

Government is a good servant, but a bad master. Government is nothing more than a machine that does things which are more convenient that way, than if we should take care of them by ourselves. We forgot that the machine is ours, it was created by us and only we can keep it in check and make it serve us again. The machine was taken over by business lobbyists and mobs, in USA religious mob, here it's gypsy social welfare mob. I believe what is happening today is people starting to take the machine back, clean it and make it again work for their best interest, if it ever did that. 

 

 

Take a good look corporate America, this is what happens when you are abusive and don't give a shit about whose pockets you pick or how you use the economy as your personal casino.

You better start giving a shit, otherwise you will have more and more people on your ass. And all I can say is YOU FUCKING DESERVE IT!

NOW please stop the pathetic fear mongering that somehow because people are getting wise to the exploitation market, that somehow that means society wants to end the free market.

 

NO! Most Americans simply want the abuse to stop and the pay gap and health care and cost of living to be less lopsided. THATS IT. And the only way to address that is to STOP CORPORATE WELFARE AND STOP THE ABUSE.

If all corporate America continues to not give a shit and continues to put profits above humans, they will only have themselves to blame for the backlash.

START paying a livable wage. START taking care of your workers. START investing back into NOT JUST JOBS, but jobs people can survive on. STOP the the profit padding and monopolies. Stop the outragious cost of health care that is nothing but profit driven. If you want people out of the EMERGANCY ROOM PROVIDE them with something even the poorist of the poor can afford.

BOTTOM LINE, START FUCKING CARING!

KUDOS to those in these protests. It is way past time the middle class and poor stood up to the abuse of the top. IT IS CLASS WARFARE AND AS BUFFET RIGHTFULLY POINTED OUT, the top is winning.

BUT what they do not understand is that this type of winning is nothing but cheating and will blow up in their faces long term because the more poverty this system creates the less the top can sell to the very poor they create.

 

 

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This is a potential large update. I am a short train ride from there and a bunch of tea party/combat seasoned veterans are gearing up to head down there.

 

I lack info on whether they are organizing on the internet for a mulitcity thing. Even so, weapons in general are banned in NYC. A while back I came close to a collision with NYC cops over having too large of a flashlight. What saved me was that I was wearing Klingon ridges at the time. NYC cops don't like to see even a hint of a chance of violence.

 

Basically, the heavily armed pissed off party is headed down there. The cops will not be pleased and neither of them much care for hippies. The cops have already used tear gas a few times.

 

Keep an eye on this one because the chance of a possible three way battle now exists.

This is not a question of unselfishness (see the next paragraph), but one of a law or right. A government is an institution meant to care for people. It belongs to the 99% of society that needs its services, that's what democracy and constitution is about. Then here comes this rich and powerful 1% minority and steals the government away. It is our right to take it back, only we have to do it ourselves. Once we do it, we can apply the political will to apply the science. RBE is the science applied to our problems, it has blueprints of solutions with the technology we already have for decades.

Self-serving does not have to mean immoral, selfish, evil or greedy or otherwise naughty. In our current government it does, but because this is not an "enlightened" self-interest.

Enlightened self-interest is in seeing ourselves as parts of a greater whole and cooperating with the whole gives better results than living on detriment of the whole. (which includes things like good relationships which do wonderful things with quality of life) This is known as the prisoner's dilemma and comes with a mathemathical proof. Those most "greedy" prisoners get most rewarded for full cooperation with other prisoners. The problem is, that not all people are "enlightened" in their self-interest or good at mathemathics or willing to give up their comfortable status quo. Specially not the 1%. 

Our biological nature did not teach us to see this far. But what makes us human is the power to overcome our genetic programming and even act directly against it. If you doubt it, read Maslow's study of human motivation and then Dawkins' the Selfish gene. These two books would perhaps change your notions about motivation and selfishness, which are I think simplistic and counter-productive. You sometimes sound almost like an anti-Darwinian creationist propaganda  

Why take money only for services delivered? There is a danger of decreasing the services. The less we pay, the less services we receive, but it's us who need the services, not the government. The government can live comfortably on minimal taxes and copious bribes from corporations.

But we can't keep paying for nothing either. Don't blame the messenger, taxes are here, because if we just pay government to do something for us, then it's more practical and cheaper than if we'd do it ourselves. The problem is not in taxes, it's in government and how, why and for what are the money used. Firstly, most of the money go all the way long to the central or federal government. There are loses. They concentrate in huge pool of funds, called budget. There the loses are extremely huge, because everyone on the top take as much as they can get away with. Mostly on purposes that do not serve the taxpayers in any way or are misleading. Then the rest of money again trickles all the way down in form of public services, which may be badly and blindly applied, for example, indiscriminate use of welfare money. 

The taxes are not bad, it's what we do with them. And this we can change. Almost all taxes, specially direct ones should stay in the city, town, group of towns or region in which they were taken. Taxes should be progressive. We arrived poor to this world and poor we shall depart, so there's no reason why people should die overly rich. Therefore, progressive taxation and banning of tax paradises. The local authorities will be directly responsible to their people for using the taxes to sponsor local hospitals, schools and retirement houses. If not, a mayor might get his car keyed and tires pierced, if he doesn't behave responsibly.

Plus, the advent of Resource-based economy will make it all even more efficiently and locally responsibly organized.

For the purpose of this examples, the volunteers are locals, so they have roofs over their heads. Also, if we take taxes progressively and keep them locally, there will be enough money for such enterprises. Such things aren't expensive, I've worked together with 20 people for a week and all what the organizers had to do was to buy food (we cooked it ourselves) and lend us a bathroom. (and some work tools of course) The food was very simple, but usually edible and rather cheap. None of us had to pay anything. The money it took to feed us are nothing compared to daily expenses at the city or municipal office, when people ask for fundings... (I know that, I'm an intern there now)

Furthermore, this is a non-issue in agriculture, which is almost all mechanized today. Only a tiny fraction of people work in agriculture. With technologies included in RBE mechanization and cheap ecologic production will even increase. 

But that's not the point. The point is the volunteering. Volunteering is fun. Why force people to have fun? It is about doing some solid work with interesting people (I was mostly with students, best and most intelligent guys and girls I've ever met) getting to know them, having fun and the hard and dirty work sort of gets done along the way. It is up to the organizers to create an interesting theme or program, that will attract the volunteers and keep them entertained.

What? You mean there is not already a widespread famine in the current system? What do you think are these 3 billions of people who live on less than 2 dollars per day???
What you say only makes sense in the system of scarcity. If there is scarcity, you have to work to get stuff, you've got to save your ass from the invisible cock of the market. (I think this will become my second favorite expression ) People will do anything for that, they will compete in economic arena, stand like braindead idiots, assembling cheap shit on conveyor belts. That is the power of money, it can force you to do a lousy job, but no amount of money will make you a master painter or inventor, if you already aren't one. If that is your talent, you will do it even for free, if you have a food and roof overhead. The point is, monetary incentive is not as awesome and necessary as you think. We will benefit the world best if we do what truly rewards us and leave the rest to the automatized robots.

We can think of the inflation as an imaginary pay to the machines, which work for free, better and faster than any human could. Let's imagine a corporation will buy the people a free lunch every day, in exchange for the right to employ robots instead of them. What's wrong about that? People's work is obsolete! Mine certainly is, you should see me walking absent-minded, long-haired, among the Korean cars on conveyor belt, thinking of social injustice

What gives the local producers the incentive to produce? Neighbours. Friends. Colleagues. Tradition. Grateful customers. The desire to be self-sufficient. Regular displays of best farmers' products. Pride and patriotism of local community. Lack of ambitions to do anything else. Or they just like that kind of job. Agriculture is a not unpopular area of study even on universities. And there is still hell a lot of room for improvement. Ever heard of permaculture, vertical hydroponic farms and automatic spiral field plow?

It is a miracle that farmers produce anything even today, with cheap abroad competition, hassle from the government and loans for mechanization on their heads. But trust me, they appreciate when people choose their products over some Chinese chemical shit, even if their stuff is more expensive. Local producers will keep the quality at the top, to please their neighbours and have a good relationship with them. They would never use a poisonous or otherwise bad substitute to dilute their milk and honey, unlike our Chinese comrades sometimes do.  
The point is, there's lots of other motivation to work than money and for the rest there is mechanization.

 

Yep, that is a very good idea. I'd love to see that done for whole gypsy (or white trash) families and communities. Something between a Jewish farming kibbutz, Hare Krishna farm and military camp. And not for a limited time, but as long until they learn the discipline and skills of daily life, from hygiene to sparing use of money. If they behave like naughty children, they should be treated like that and live in modern "tribes" with firm rules.

The point is, such camps might prove to be more comfortable or therapeutic to most of such people than life in the mainstream society. They might also become productive in terms of bio-quality farming products. But if exposed to commercialization, monetary profit at all costs, it would quickly turn into slavery. 

 

Well, now you understand how I feel when talking with atheists and Christians But seriously, if that's what leftists are... Both right and left wings are caught in the contemporary system, which is totally inefficient, as I already described. Switching power from left to right wing and back every elections will not solve anything. The problems must be addressed by rational management of resources and the government itself. 
By the way, if you disagree with private ownership of natural resources, what about a free transparent international barter of excessive resources? Non-monetary basis, distribution according to the real needs. Relatively minimal needs, without the consumer culture. No more iPads and other devices newly produced every year and impossible to modify or innovate.

 

In RBE people practically don't have to work to get food. Stuff like vertical mechanized hydroponic farms, etc. Plus solar-powered desalinization water production, etc. The technology is here, only market forces see no profit in it. Agriculture belongs to the primary sector, the less people work there, the more is the society advanced. In our modern society it's just a couple of %, maybe less.
Yes, we surely need a population growth control. The reproductive functions must be controlled. The problem is, you can't demand that from people, if you don't offer them something else first. Offer them education, career, entertainment and so on, and a completely different motivation kicks in. They will voluntarily delay childbearing to have more fun in life. This is called demographic revolution and it's the only thing that permanently decreases population and without violence. The trick is, it must be applied on whole Earth simultaneously, otherwise advanced countries get overrun by immigrants. All of Earth must fight for the justice of RBE and get treated with a fair share of resources, to live in dignity without the need to produce a dozen or two of child slaves.

I think the free food should go hand in hand with free contraception. I am reluctant to think of choices like mixing contraception into that free food, perhaps except of places like 20 million Mexico city slums, which might actually make everyone happy. Although a contraception chocolate bar sounds futuristic, the true solution is to keep people educated and informed. Contraception should be kept free as something that people use commonly, gladly and can't imagine their lives without it. 

 

In the interest of providing free food, housing, healthcare, education, security, energy, and creating jobs to fulfill these needs. Organizing national resources, offering them for international barter. As a think tank listening to people's opinions and suggestions (regularly gathered by computer queries) and carrying out their needs by openly developing creative solutions though the philosophy of RBE. 

I imagine such politicians like a group of creative thinkers and philosophers plus technical experts to consult their ideas and give them a practical form, plus the full Internet of interested public to provide a direct feedback. And I imagine myself among them

As for the deadly force, we are not civilized. We have the police, army, courts and much evidence to see that they won't prevent the criminality, only avenge it. RBE is truly civilized, there are no such things, neither there are social and biological reasons for criminality and violence. 
 

Well if we are going to go that route, I was out playing bar trivia and have not got an update on the pissed off tea party heavily armed people.  Still:

LOL, that's probably work of those folks who create fake UFO pictures and videos for unknown reasons. Do they want to help or damage the people's movement?

But there should be little doubt about media bias. For example, in my country media report on anti-gipsy protests, but they tell nothing of anti-government demonstrations and festivals in Prague. People were drumming in front of the castle and shouting "DEMISSION!" But what do we see in TV? The "inadaptables", as we are now allowed to call them politically correctly.

In my country, all non-state media are owned by Germans. Who owns your media?

 

 

Well, there are big national corporations but they have been pushed down by an Aussie who lies through his teeth and a Brit who hacks his own royal families cell phones.

What a selfish mentality. You don't mind making money off the labor of others, but you don't want to do a damned thing to help your workers, other than to say "buck it up".

Warren Buffet who probably makes you look homeless by comparison would call you a crybaby.

Yea, you can do that. You have the legal right to do that. But that says more about you and nothing about your workers who DO WORK HARD and would be pissed if you did that.

It is funny how people with this mentality want loyalty to their company but don't do a damn thing themselves to be loyal to their workers or the communities they live in.

If I made 200k a year and half of that was taken away in taxes, there STILL would not be one county in the United States where I could not live comfortably. If I made 1 million and only ended up with 500k there still would not be any county here where I could not find a decent place to live. Millionaires and billionaires have no fucking excuse and as far as I am concerned they are the welfare queens and the crybabies.

LET THEM EAT CAKE!

Oh my god, who the fuck said anything about that making money off labor should be illegal?

I called you selfish because you would make them suffer before you would sacrifice something yourself There are many business owners, mostly mom and pop shops, that do put their employees first. But there are not enough big businesses that do this. People should not be treated like a number on a page.

What is more important? Eating, or your 9 holes of golf? If the economy were great no one would give a fuck, but I find it sick that you would blackmail society instead of playing one less round or own one less car or live in one house.

There is nothing wrong with owning a business, BY ITSELF. It is not what you want, it is HOW you want to get it and what you would do to others to get it.

 

I hope that these people that are protesting are all registered voters if so then we can possibly right the mistake that was made during the midterms and remove all the extreme right wingers (read tea party) from office. It is time we cleaned up the Tax code and closed ALL of the corporate loopholes that keep companies like GE from paying anywhere near their share of the taxes. I am not saying we need to raise taxes I am saying we need to close the loopholes and make all income (capitol gains) equally taxable. I also think on the reverse side we need to do away with the earned income credit. I'm sorry but NO ONE should get more back that they paid in taxes especially if that amount paid was none. Regardless of what deductions an individual is eligible for there should be a minimum percentage of their income they have to pay in taxes. Fair taxes work both ways. The problem is extreme liberals will never want to take away a handout like the EIC and tea party members will never close the loop holes for business because they will call it raising taxes. This is all a very complicated matter and no one seems to really want to sit down and work out a solution that truly shares the burden amongst everyone. Personally I don't mind paying my share of the taxes I just think everyone should pay their fair share.

Isn't a big reason why GE paid no taxes because all leftists want green energy investment? So GE takes advantage of all the tax breaks pushed by the left and now they are demonized by the leftists.

http://biggovernment.com/dfreeman/2011/03/26/green-energy-helps-bring-ge-taxes-to-zero/

It's the same shit as the bank demonization. The left demonized banks for not lending enough to poor and had the government to make it a policy to lend to the poor. Now the banks are evil and greedy for going bankrupt for making so many loans to people that couldn't repay.

So I don't know here you come off blaming the tea party, when they are against all this special subsidies for green energy. The left was pushing for loans to Solyndra, not the tea party.

 

 

If government is a deadly force, then why are most government-havers alive? Of course it is a set of rules, just like a computer program is a set of rules. Are computer programs deadly forces? 

No, government must take care of people by default, charity is a makeshift attempt to patch up huge holes in the system. But do WE need charity? Is sewerage charity? Is streetlight charity? Is municipal police charity? Is free public school system charity? Do you buy the asphalt under your feet? Some things are just too large to buy for an individual and too common to bother ourselves about. That's what government is for, a machine to take care of daily mundane details that make our lives better. Don't try to pick mistakes where are none, don't try to fix parts of the machine that work well, fix only what is broken. This is why you're an IT guy and I study public administration. Thank you for the opportunity to exercise my thoughts and express them better. It will really help next time I'd have to convince someone else.

On the contrary, you seem to believe that there is some moral standard that is not our invention, and it is our primitive animalistic and genetic urges. Yes, these urges are real, but they become weak and latent when people are taken care of properly. Abraham Maslow says so and modern society agrees, takes a contraception pill and forgets 3 million years of our evolution.

I consider money just an imaginary vector of economy, I do not think it should (exist, or at least) be privately owned by the rich in large amounts. I like to think of money as of water and electricity, omnipresent, vital and free in small amounts, not as gold and cocaine, luxurious, adored and addictive.

As for the mentioned unconditional birth rights, this idea is very non-theistic. Religious people are very exclusive and snobbish, they certainly wouldn't wish them for everyone. This is instead an act of inventing new morality. But this is no hippie talk, this is actually a clever trick to fool the primitive human brain. This is the proper treatment that human brain needs to put the primitive urges to sleep. 

But nowhere I said anything of birth-responsibilities. Don't presume I haven't thought of these, I have an electrotechnic automatization high school education and much of that is highly similar to workings of state and economy. The utilitarian resemblance, positive and negative feedbacks for proper regulation, and so on.
Duties are the negative feedback for the society, except that this is a sensitive and risky topic. People like to hear about the birth-rights, but talk about birth-responsibilities and they accuse you of communism, fascism and other regimes that forced people to public participation, marches with banners, decorating their windows and so on. So this can not work by force. This must come about by educating children for active citizenship and organizing adults into volunteering through fun and positive motivation. This needs subtlety and overall cultural influence.
I would welcome things like an open caste system of society, in which you can move up and down and gain or lose rights according to your needs and abilities. But talking about this publically is really premature. With wrong materialistic priorities of today such a system would be a nightmare.

 Yes, that's the corrupting influence of scarcity and monetary system. If people are willing to mess up the logistics for money, then perhaps we'd be better off without money. Or at least without the fear of not having money and irrational desire to have more money than we can possibly use. With scarcity out of society, honesty and fairness becomes natural.
I love honesty and fairness, because it makes things go smoothly. Others will appreciate it too, given chance when scarcity is gone.

I don't exactly think local is the best, but that local and global are equally important. 
Yes, individual self-control is the ideal, but there are things you do NOT WANT to have control over, because they are FUCKING ANNOYING. This is why people create a "machine" or an organization that will do them for you. You don't want to build your own roads or manually switch on and off all streetlights in neighbourhood, or personally guard your own house instead going on holidays. This is what you'd have to do in anarchy. But clever people invented a machine called government that will do these annoying chores. Your job is only to tell it what you want, give it some little money and kick the living shit out of it, if it ever starts thinking that it exists for anything else than serving your basic needs.

The modern idea is, that it is fucking annoying to work all day long in monetary system, run in the monetary treadmill and trying to outrun the invisible dick of the market behind you. Today we have the technology to put this to history and create a government that will take care also of the mentioned basic needs like food, housing, education, healthcare and so on. 

People leave, because there are tax paradises that are allowed to compete with our "people's paradises". Our system is globally fucked up (we call it globalization) and this is why the solution must be global too. We need a non-competitive system, the problem is, that such a system is incapable of competition, it needs to stiffle the competition first. When it comes to making a living, competition is a nonsense anyway.

You can't set progressive taxes and locally beneficial economy without doing so in the whole world, or at least closing your borders. Or in case of some European countries, where everyone buys ONLY from local national offers, NEVER from foreigners, no matter of the costs and savings. This is an absolute antithesis to the so-called free market competition, yet it works wonderfully and I'd like to see this officially in the whole world. No more cheap shit from China, back to the good old "commie" boots and electronics that last 20 years at least, they were made to last, not to end up on dump yard in two years. Planned obsolence is absurd.

Firstly, volunteering in various humanitary processes can be with some guidance and proper funding classified as 'fun'. Peace Corps, for example, though they had lots of problems with politics and bureaucracy.

Secondly, large families of people cost us relatively little, because our budgets ignore them. 3 billions of people live on less than 2 dollars a day, how is that expensive??? The top global expenses are not social by far, we spend today more on weapons than during cold war arms race. Add to that entertainment industry, consumer product industry, big pharma, and specially all this financial industry, which is totally useless and yet holds more money than anything else. We have time and money for all that, yet nothing for the people. Just remember when bankers fucked up last time, who received all these hundreds of billions? The hungry people? Nope, Wall Street. This is what keeps us in a global stone age.
So the cost of feeding all the hungry mouths is ridiculously small, compared to all that we waste every year. Someone has his priorities fucking wrong.

 

No, we don't. Any system without demographic revolution will be overpopulated, because this is people's primitive reaction on harsh conditions. War, poverty and lack of education make people multiply like bacteria. First eliminate war, poverty and illiteracy, only then the obvious rational methods of contraception can have any effect. Every demographic revolution has a temporary increase of population, but if you do it right, the increase is minimal. And then it steadily declines. And all this while having the country all nice and safe place to live or travel in.

 

The problem with gypsies is, they're statistically not very intellectual, but there is a noticeable talent for music and dance. I think they would be happiest in the primary and secondary sector, like agriculture, fishing, building, woodwork, etc. Of course, it is necessary to try to raise their skills, not hold them in place. Anyone who has the interest should try to develop it. There are some highly educated gipsy individuals, although they had to abandon the tribal families, they would not fit in there. I only say that the tightly knit together tribes in ghettos today should start at the bottom with simpliest work, that would be boring for us intellectuals. 

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMSFLAsNzc No, you don't trade your labor. Your country's superior buying power (and ownership of superior financial institutions, military force and so on) allows it to enslave and ransom the rest of the world to do the work for almost nothing and carry most of the expenses by itself. The dollar price tag on such a thing is just a speculative fiction, it has nothing to do with the price of resources, labour, impact on ecology and humanitarian conditions. This is the free market system, everyone's free to get bullied at nearest opportunity.

 

No, this is what I would have to do in monetary system and with no political will worthy of that name. This is why we need RBE, in RBE you don't have to put a fence around land for your survival, food (and everything else according to demand and resources) is produced and given to you in necessary amount as a basic right. You don't have to pay for electricity and pollution, because electricity is produced sustainably and ecologically. And you don't have to tax anyone, because there is no money. Just like USA didn't pay for the hundreds of thousands of airplanes instantaneously produced when WW2 broke out and they really needed these airplanes. Your objections are all valid and stuff, but we need to overthrow the system and estabilish RBE to make them irrelevant, anything else is just beating a dead horse.

If you have any actual objections to RBE, I'd like to hear them.

Everything must go through the proper channels. Protesters protest, that's their job. Their job is to kick the government or if necessary, bring it down. They must keep bitching until it starts spending money on training and creating job opportunities for people like you. This is called division or specialization of labour and was very highly appreciated by anyone who ever needed a job done. Working on large projects is a collective, organized effort, whether you like it or not. And our current problems are global and need a deep global overhaul, not just retraining a few thousands people. If you can't understand that, I'm happy to tell you about it, which I do right now. 

No science? There is Jacque Fresco's solid engineering plus behavioral research like Abraham Maslow's and genetically-cultural phenomena like Dutch potato famine and many others things, explained on the website and in the two latter Zeitgeist movies. But most notably, there is the basic common sense, logic, efficiency and global overview that hippies never understood. Hippies dropped out of college, RBE promoters enroll on colleges.

On the contrary, there is no science in economy as it is today. I've been taught the economy and it's all just an ideal fictitious model. The reality is absolutely different and goes against all logic. Even the good old supply and demand does not apply anymore.

Then why has the current recession caused birth rates to drop?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/27/business/main6811139.shtml

The same thing also happened in the Great Depression.

Even if this theory is correct, the solution is still mandatory birth conrol for a least one genertion. If government is no longer swamped with too many poor unemployed people, then you never get to the point of removing the harsh conditions to see if your theory is correct. Once population preasures are no longer present, then madatory birth control could be eased.

If there is good science behind this RBE, why don't the true believers go off and start a commune and show us all it working on a small scale? If is utopia, people would then be willing to adopt it globally right?  At least the hippies in the 60s tried to start some communes based on their beliefs and then these later folded as predicted.

What should happen is different theories of social order should be experimented with to see if your theories are correct or are mine.

 

 

 

Lets not confuse business with monopolies which is what you rightfully condemn "corporate war criminals" of.

It is not a matter of all business bad and all those who want to make money bad. It is the simple climate of thought that "It worked for me" so it must be good for all.

A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly, be it religious or political or business.

Business by itself is not bad. Humans need to sell stuff to put food on the table. What you seem to miss which Beyond Saving seems to miss is that the desires are not the problem, it is the insistence that what works for you is good for all.

 

 

Because U. S. already underwent demographic revolution, FFS! USA is not Nigeria or Somalia. It is a developed, industrialized country with educated population. Industrialized means that people usually don't make living by agriculture, so more babies won't help them work in the crop fields. This is why people react by having less children instead of more.
American problem is not as much overpopulation, but extremely high consumption and waste of global resources. 

Yes, birth control is a necessity. But you can't order it as mandatory and enforce it ruthlessly, because this would be oppression and people would eventually rebel against it, destroying everything, good and bad aspects of the plan. Also, you can't come to poor, uneducated people and demand one more thing from them, not to have children to take care of them when they're old. They would give you a finger. 
I wouldn't advise a total contraception, something tells me that rapid drop in birth rates would create lots of demographic problems, like a majority of elderly people and not enough of young ones to take care of things. But it's an experts' job to tell. I'd prefer a regular, orderly decrease of population over a longer period. But it must be done through positive motivation, advanced psychology and social engineering, so people have less children willingly. Every violation of free will has bad consequences.
 

There is no such thing as a RBE commune, (besides the Venus town in Florida, new facilities in Ecuador etc) because RBE is based on cybernation, not human labour or decision-making. If you want to see RBE in practice, visit a Japanese factory where they have Just-in-time logistics, which eliminates the need for storage facilities. Look at their automatic assembly lines. Try out these new cars that automatically park for you. Have a ride in the new London Heathrow airport automatic buses. It is not about idelogy, but about applying science and technology. There is no necessary belief, science and technology already proved themselves trustworthy. RBE is designed to eliminate even more unnecessary hassle from our lives and give us more freedom in material security. The rest is up to us.

Living with so much more free time must be obviously very different from how we live now. It will require some adaptation, specially educating people on how to spend free time productively, doing their true hobbies. But don't try to tell me that free time is a bad thing and that it is better to spend it in boredom and misery of resource-wasting work as we do today. We are capable of cybernating the industry and we are also capable of inventing productive activities for free time. (where do you think the university of the 3rd age came from?) This is where we can and should experiment, while technology provides everyone free food. Jacque Fresco designed the technologic aspect, the social aspect is up to each one of us.

What sort of social order do you imagine, in society where technology eliminates the need to hoard money and property and compete with other people in the process? I can only know for sure that people will differ according to their qualification (education, expertise, etc), independence, initiative, creativity, social skills and past achievements. Which is pretty much informal. Maybe you imagine something more formalized than college degrees? Social engineering is for some as exciting as technical inventions. But whatever kind of social order there will be, RBE will make it much more comfortable to live in.

You can have a look at some explanatory  videos, you'll see this is no utopia, but a rational application of technology.